Walking on the mosaic floor I saw an ant. A tiny red ant, a lone ant that I was about to kill with my feet. I was wearing a heavy shoe that would've killed the ant instantly. I dodged and saved him, I stopped, squatted down near him and took a moment to look at him. He seemed not to care about the sudden turn of his luck. He seemed to care in the least that I was around and went about his routine quasi random path, looking for God knows what. He was meant to die, but another conscious being, out of sheer chance and curiosity, saved him. He was running away so I blocked his path with my hand, he collided, felt the obstruction and just turned away towards another direction. That was a bummer, I thought. He wasn't scared, he didn't care and walked away. How many ever time I tried he just turned away. He didnt even realize that he had been running around in a tiny little region. If anything he seemed to be more in a hurry. That's the least he could've expressed at the little meaningless game I was playing with him. But then I began to ponder and let my mind wander in a path just like the ant was following.
The ant doesn't have the capacity to comprehend, or to appreciate its surroundings. He cant realize that there exist beings like humans, thousands of times bigger than them and billions of times smarter than them. He doesn't grasp the fact that he is in the bottom of the food chain, while a being watching it, is right at the top. He just goes about doing what the infinitesimal neuron circuit in its head makes him do. We ever need to build a road and an ant hill is in the way, people dont even give a second thought and raze it to the ground, sans emotion, sans pity for the co-inhabitors of Earth.
On the other hand, we do have the faculties to comprehend the vastness of our universe. We are a being on a tiny planet going around a tiny star, along with a few other rocks. The sun is almost at the edge of a spiral galaxy, Milky way, filled with billions of stars. And this milky way is just another galaxy among billions others separated by unthinkable distances. When we look at the sky, we know we are looking at the past, because the light from the stars we see were sent by the star millions of years ago. How do we know this? Because we have to ability to know this. Compared to the vastness of the Universe, the ant and I are the same.
Imagine, we know about the Universe just by sitting in our lonely planet. So how much do we really know about it, when there's so much more left to know about our own planet? Our brain is probably a billion times more complex that the ant's, but is it enough brain to comprehend what the Universe has to offer in its fullest of might and glory? Or are we just ants to the Universe, without meaning or care, that can be ended with a cosmic cataclysm, and then nothing would matter? Do we have enough for us to be the supreme consciousness of the Universe?
The ant doesn't have the capacity to comprehend, or to appreciate its surroundings. He cant realize that there exist beings like humans, thousands of times bigger than them and billions of times smarter than them. He doesn't grasp the fact that he is in the bottom of the food chain, while a being watching it, is right at the top. He just goes about doing what the infinitesimal neuron circuit in its head makes him do. We ever need to build a road and an ant hill is in the way, people dont even give a second thought and raze it to the ground, sans emotion, sans pity for the co-inhabitors of Earth.
On the other hand, we do have the faculties to comprehend the vastness of our universe. We are a being on a tiny planet going around a tiny star, along with a few other rocks. The sun is almost at the edge of a spiral galaxy, Milky way, filled with billions of stars. And this milky way is just another galaxy among billions others separated by unthinkable distances. When we look at the sky, we know we are looking at the past, because the light from the stars we see were sent by the star millions of years ago. How do we know this? Because we have to ability to know this. Compared to the vastness of the Universe, the ant and I are the same.
Imagine, we know about the Universe just by sitting in our lonely planet. So how much do we really know about it, when there's so much more left to know about our own planet? Our brain is probably a billion times more complex that the ant's, but is it enough brain to comprehend what the Universe has to offer in its fullest of might and glory? Or are we just ants to the Universe, without meaning or care, that can be ended with a cosmic cataclysm, and then nothing would matter? Do we have enough for us to be the supreme consciousness of the Universe?
No comments:
Post a Comment